Mark Manson - Models: Attract Women Through Honesty

Copyright 2011-2016 Mark Manson

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In April 2011, in a cramped andhorribly overpriced hotel room in London, I began the outline for adating advice book.

For anyone who has tried to write a book,they know that starting it is the most daunting part. There were somany considerations, so many ideas, so many goals and ambitions.And for a few days, I was paralyzed with all of the potential.

But I soon decided to limit myself to onespecific aim. I asked myself, What book do I wish I would haveread when I was single and struggling in my dating life? If I hadonly read one book, what do I wish it had told me?

As the weeks went by, it turned out that Iwished it had told me a lot. The book spilled out of me in asomewhat involuntary manner, a kind of intellectual vomit. I wastouring Europe, giving talks and coaching live at the time, and Iwould often finish up a session with a client or do a Q&A witha small audience and immediately run to my hotel room to jot someof the ideas that had spewed out of my mouth into the nowballooning book.

I also decided early on that I wanted to makethe book different stylistically. I had read pretty much everyother dating advice book on the market and thought most of themwere garbage. I already knew the core ideas of this book were goingto be different deeper, more personal, more emotional. But I alsowanted the style of the book to be different. Perhaps I was up myown ass with self-importance, but I wanted to give it a bit more ofa literary flair. I wanted the beauty and joy of the datingexperience to come across in the writing itself. I didnt just wantto lay out step-by-step plans and information to be memorized, Iwanted to move the reader, since after all, the whole point of thebook is that dating and romance is about just that: allowingyourself to be moved, both emotionally and physically.

I wrote the book in less than three months.Most of it was written in hotel rooms and small apartments acrossEurope: first London, then Bristol, then Prague, then St.Petersburg, and it was finally finished in Budapest.

The first version of the book was long andsloppy: 366 pages, with at least that many typos, grammaticalerrors, and dumb tangents. At the time, my aspirations were fairlypedestrian. I wanted to be able to make some money online withouthaving to physically be in one spot, as almost four years ofconstant travel to do the coaching thing was wearing on me.

But I also wanted to get my ideas out intothe world and hopefully make a dent in the dating advice industrysince, at the time, I felt that what I had to say was quitedifferent from the vast majority of toxic Pick Up advice that wasbeing taught to men.

The book came out on July 5th,2011. It was self-published through Amazon and my own website. Thatfirst month it only sold a few hundred copies mostly blog readersand former clients of mine. Many of them reported to me many of themistakes and helped me edit it over the proceeding weeks and a fewsmall updates were released soon after. By the fall of that year, Ifelt good that it was out there and people liked it and soon movedon to other projects.

But as the months rolled on, the book beganto take on a life of its own. With no marketing, no publicity, nopromotion, and a shitty cover I made myself in Photoshop, thebooks sales grew exponentially each month. Like a mind virus,infecting peoples brains so that they could move on and infectothers, men began recommending it to their friends, and thentheir friends recommended it to their friends, and soontheir friends friends were buying it for their brothers andcousins and even newly divorced fathers and uncles. It was soonbeing recommended on websites and forums so much that I began toget emails asking me to stop spamming. But I wasnt spamming. Iwasnt doing anything. It was simply the readers.

By early 2012, to my pleasant surprise, I wasearning enough to make a living as an author. So I quit coachingand focused solely on my writing. That same summer I also gave thebook its first real revision. I hired a designer to create a realcover. I chopped about 50 of the more pedantic and excessive pages.I simplified some of the terms and theories and tried to make themmore reader-friendly. What I consider the first professionalversion of Models was released in August of 2012.

From there the book went on to become thehighest selling mens dating advice book for years at a time,outselling mainstays such as Neil Strausss The Game andErik Von Markoviks The Mystery Method, often evenoutselling most womens dating advice books, which is kind ofunheard of in the industry. It was a perennial bestseller in thecategory on Amazon and has actually reached a point where manypopular mens dating advice forums and sites list it with a readthis before asking any questions note in their FAQs orsidebars.

By 2013, I felt as though I was finished withthe book. I was ready to move on. I was preparing to relaunch mysite and start writing articles for both genders with topicsranging from personal psychology to the cultural effects ofsmartphones and newsfeeds. I was leaving dating advice behind forgood.

Over the next two years, my sites popularityexploded. Over 20 million people read it in 2015 alone. YetModels has always persisted, always there in the background.Always a throbbing reminder of where I came from, as well as thevirtue of taking a calculated risk and seeing where it led me.

Because, most people dont realize this now,but Models was a huge risk when it came out.

See, back in 2011, few pieces of dating orrelationship advice talked about blunt honesty, about acceptingrejection or even polarizing people for negative responses.Vulnerability was considered a vulgar word among most men andanything that didnt get you laid as soon as possible was oftendeemed pointless, or even worse, being beta.

And, god forbid, you talk aboutemotions or trauma or feelings of inadequacy. Like really, who thefuck wants to hear about that, you pussy? Go approach more!

But I had known from working with hundreds ofmen around the world that most of their dating problems had littleto do with knowing what to say or tactics to get women to sleepwith them sooner. The vast majority of these mens problems wereemotional. They were rooted in deep inabilities to experienceintimacy. They were born out of an irrationally negativeself-perception that came from a lifetime of feeling inferior andinadequate around women. They came from men who were scared to lookreality in the eye and still smile.

I knew when I put these pages together thatthey were either going to revamp much of the industry or they weregoing to be laughed off the Amazon sales page and Id soon go get aday job.